New England - Halloween Snow Storm Road Updates

The aftermath of Saturday's freak snowstorm is still being felt in New England as thousands are still without power and many roadways remain dangerous. An added stress with this situation is the lack of available fuel - those gas stations that do have power are running out of fuel quickly.

Key points:
- If you are traveling in the area (central Connecticut and central and western Massachusetts), expect to wait in long lines for fuel.
- I've not heard of any Interstates with problems (other than traffic) at this point. Most major roadways (Interstates and US routes) are clear; however, there is extensive tree damage and many of the other roads (state roads and secondary roads) are reduced to one, windy, debris-strewn lane.
- Watch out for downed power lines and falling debris.

Saturday night and most of Sunday brought the explosive sounds of trees shattering. Many of these trees still had green leaves on them, and the added weight of over 12" of wet and sticky snow was too much for them to bear.

In my area, this means we have had the following items happen in the last five months:

Tornadoes
Microburst
Hurricane
Earthquake
Freak early snowstorm (not a blizzard as it wasn't very windy)

Newton and NJ.

Originally Posted by Mass Tim

Stay safe.

You too!

Son tells me that Newton got a mere 6" of snow, and branches down all over the place... but no trees that he could see. Daughter in northern NJ did not fare as well. They got considerably more snow, with trees down all over the place. Thankfully, neither have had an interruption to their power supply. But schools were closed.

My brother in northern NJ was still without power on Monday, they closed schools, and he lost 1/3 of the maple tree that's in his backyard. I haven't heard from him since then, but the cell phone may have died.

Some city official in Massachusetts was trying to get the town's kids to go trick-or-treating on THURSDAY this week instead of on Halloween. It didn't work. The kids went on Monday anyway. Most of the walks had been shoveled as had the roads.

Still Out

I still don't have power at my house, so any connectivity I have is from work. Timeline looks like tomorrow night at the earliest for power to return to my house. Keeping with the Halloween theme, I have severed limbs (mostly oak and maple) all over my yard. It looks like most of the houses were spared any significant damage in my town - which is good, since many are still repairing from June's tornado.

Gas is still hard to come by in the region, so keep that in mind if you're coming this way for any reason.

Power returned to my house at approximately 1:20pm today. However, there are still spotty outages here and there. That said, most businesses are fully up an running, and there are no longer lines a half mile long to get into gas stations.